Sometimes Rules Must Be Broken

I’m a big fan of Copyblogger. I enjoy reading it and have learned a lot. One of my favorite contributing writers is James Chartrand of Men with Pens.

Yesterday James published one of the most thought provoking articles I’ve read in a long time - Why James Chartrand Wears Women’s Underpants.

It clearly struck a cord with a lot of readers as evidenced by the comment count, 384 (as of this writing and climbing steadily, 24 hours later) and over 1700 retweets . The comments are as thought provoking and well thought out as the post itself and I recommend reading them, all of them. I have personally spent over an hour reading through them and I’m still trying to come to grips with my own emotions that this has exposed.

The article centers around the fact that James is, in fact, a woman. And why she writes as a man and diligently concealed this fact. I’m not going into it here, as I said before, go read it for yourself. What I do want to address here, however is what we can do when confronted by injustice in our lives.

I write this blog primarily for a female audience and my niche in that audience is Mothers who would like to be, or are just starting out as, Virtual Assistants. My passion for helping you become successful Virtual Assistants is because I, too have had to stare down the ugly discrimination monster - for working at home and for being self-employed. Instead of “getting a real job” and leaving my developmentally disabled son home alone or in a day care situation that was not safe for him, I chose a different path and, in the words of Henry David Thoreau, it has made all the difference.

I hope you will do the same. Never say, “I can’t”, instead say, “How can I?” The answer isn’t in deception, the answer is in, integrity. If James had not chosen a male pen name, I would likely never have heard of her. I would not have learned from her, been encouraged by her or challenged to be better at my craft. That is, in fact the deception - to hide your talent from the world. The honesty is in finding a way to share your talent without making excuses.

James Chartrand’s story reminds me of the Kobayashi Maru simulation in Star Trek. Captain Kirk wouldn’t accept a “no-win” scenario so he changed the rules.

Here’s to the rule breakers!

Popularity: 1% [?]

If you have any questions or suggestions, just click on Contact Me above and send me a message. I'd love to hear from you. Thanks for visiting!